OC LIVE : The Spirituals Move Him Into Action : Harlem Ensemble’s Founder Gives a New Voice to a Dying Tradition

Francois Clemmons grew up with spirituals. “My mother sang spirituals,” he recalls. “I grew up in a Baptist church, singing and later conducting. I had a lot of experience singing church spirituals before I went away to Oberlin College and Carnegie-Mellon University.” But he realized that the tradition was dying out.

“So many cities had Bach choral groups or Handel oratorio groups or a Schubert or a Mendelssohn society. That was great. But I thought, ‘Why isn’t there an American Negro spiritual ensemble?’ Nobody ever gave me a satisfactory answer. I’d hear of one group or another that sang spirituals--sometimes. That was like having a lot of college football teams but not having the pros.

“I began to ask myself, ‘Why not have more pros singing spirituals on a regular basis?’ I could feel a vacuum, and I thought maybe I could fill it.”

Fill it he did. In 1985, Clemmons founded the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble, and now he has his hands full keeping up with the demand for it. He was on the phone last week from Borrego Springs, Calif., a stop on a four-month tour that brings his group to Saddleback College on Friday.

At first, Clemmons remembers, he felt “incredibly inadequate. I didn’t have the historical background. I love this music, but I didn’t have the musicological authority. So I started doing original research. It became my hobby.”

He traveled the South, doing research at university libraries and touring what was left of slave-trading sites. He came away with “a very good understanding of part of our culture,” and he learned there is a “major difference” between spirituals and gospel music.

“Spirituals are really an oral tradition, passed down by word of mouth because slaves were not allowed to read or write. They would be passed from one generation to the next, from one region to the next, and there would be changes, depending on the occasion they were sung for. But slaves were not allowed to take credit for creating them or for their improvisations.

“Gospel music, on the other hand, has a composer. It comes from a period of time, around 1900, when black people began to write their own songs and take authority for them. Now an individual could write a song and take full credit for it. Gospel music comes from this different era.”

Moreover, spirituals usually were sung a cappella. “A great deal of that music comes from the Congregational tradition or the Puritan or Quaker traditions, and they did not believe in having instruments in churches. Some instruments, like the fiddle, were even considered the devil’s instruments.

“Gospel music did use instruments. You could bring in a fiddle or a drum, or a full contingent of drums. Or a Hammond organ. When they played, it was a rousing collection of instruments.”

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Clemmons decided he could add a piano because some slaves were taught to play for plantation guests. He also added percussion “because percussion--the talking drum--is an African connection.” So the group uses accompaniment “a great deal, though not all the time.”

The focus remains on the earlier music, though.

“We had to establish a raison d’e^tre for ourselves. The only way I felt it could be totally justified was for us to specialize in doing the spirituals. So we don’t do gospel. We do part singing but keep it simple. But Bach is simple, on the surface. That doesn’t mean it’s not spiritual and profound.

“We don’t teach these songs in the public schools anymore because of diverse religions and tastes,” he noted. “Where are the children going to learn this repertory?”

He said that at first, his efforts stirred some bemusement in the African American community, which considered the music old-fashioned. But that attitude has changed.

“When we sing spirituals,” Clemmons said, “it’s like a rap singer addressing his grandmother. No matter how contemporary you are, your grandmother changed your diapers, wiped your nose, comforted you. Grandmother may be old-fashioned, but she was necessary. That’s the best image I can think of.

“Necessary, too, otherwise we forget what we are. You have respect, veneration for grandmother, who gives you unconditional love. There’s nobody can take the place of your grandmother.

“That’s how they relate to us now. They’re very respectful.”

* MUSIC LISTINGS, FXX

* Who: The Harlem Spiritual Ensemble.

* When: Friday at 8 p.m.

* Where: McKinney Theatre, Saddleback College, 28000 Marguerite Parkway, Mission Viejo.

* Whereabouts: Take the Avery Parkway exit from Interstate 5, go east to Marguerite Parkway, turn left and proceed about half a mile to the campus entrance. Turn right, then follow Theater Circle Road to the top of the hill. Park in Lot 12.

* Wherewithal: $15-$17.

* Where to call: (714) 582-4656.